The Near-Death of Blog Search

The first blog search engine was PubSub in 2002. It was inventive and strange in some ways (and took some getting used to); but it was fast and did a good job of searching through syndicated postings, mostly from blogs — at least until blog spam became an epidemic that nearly killed the whole category a couple years later.

Second was Bloglines, which came along in early 2003 and was a Web-based RSS news aggregator, more than a search engine. But I include them in this list because operative word there was (and still is) news. Although news is about the new, it has always at least aspired to old school big-J Journalism, which means it expects to be archived, no matter how much of the medium itself ends up in recycling bins, landfills and doctors' office waiting rooms. With published (rather than broadcast) news, there is is an assumption of flow between curated forms. It comes from writers or editor, out through publishers, into the hands of readers, and then back into curation after the first readers are done with it.

Curation by archiving is essential if the work is to have durable value, which requires making it available to future readers. So, even if, in the case of blogs, the curatorial function up front is brief and non-institutional (the writer is the editor and the publisher), every post went up on a website with a "permalink." Meaning it could always be found there.

Since then Feedster and Blog Digger have died off. Yahoo was never serious about it. IceRocket and Blogpulse were both sold and are now mostly buzz search engines that don't remember anything more than a few months old. Blog Digger's page is still up but doesn't do anything. And Technorati, which once maintained a complete index of all syndicated sources, including all blogs from the beginning of its existence, turned into one of those "content" mills a few years back.

The only true blog search engine still standing is Google Blogsearch, which is basically a specialized search in Google's Big Engine. I hope they keep it going, because it's an essential resource for finding the kind of news that's syndicated live, still curates itself, and isn't just about pushing or riding whatever happens to be buzzing at the moment.

This is what Twitter hath wrought. And Facebook to a lesser extent. They've buried real news — stuff worth keeping around — under a mountain of buzz, all of which melts away after minutes, weeks or, at the most, months.

But the durable stuff still matters. Journalism, compromised and corrupted as it has become, still matters. Perhaps more than ever. And that means journals like this one, and the long-form voices of bloggers, still matter too. But only to the degree that the work can still be found.

Comment viewing options

IMO the blog search is not a really independent search, As the blog content is the article , poll, photo and so on. It includes many content. Also Its search should be added in to generally search like google blog search http://www.google.com/blogsearch.

IMO the blog search is not a really independent search, As the blog content is the article , poll, photo and so on. It includes many content. Also Its search should be added in to generally search like google blog search http://www.google.com/blogsearch.

... but there really is -more- than just news-worthy content blogging. Don't get me wrong, I think that is probably the most important. However, there are those who wish to pontificate past a 140 character limit in order to better illustrate a thought, or try to convince a reader or simply ramble about something future generations may not even care about.

It may be something useful to people, it may be something that makes them think. But it's certainly longer than what you can post on facebook or feed into Twitter. The blogosphere is crucial to a deeper understanding since it can take the time and space needed to flesh out the idea being presented.

This is why I blog. I don't do it often, perhaps once or twice a month on average. And it's not followed by a large group. But it's more than just a sound-bite in the waterfall of social media nuggets. In the long term it becomes history. Not the kind you'll read in a book in school, but something like the memoirs of and average guy.

Blogging is a much greater "share" of knowledge than facebook or Twitter will ever be.

As Linux continues to play an ever increasing role in corporate data centers and institutions, ensuring the integrity and protection of these systems must be a priority. With 60% of the world's websites and an increasing share of organization's mission-critical workloads running on Linux, failing to stop malware and other advanced threats on Linux can increasingly impact an organization's reputation and bottom line.

Most companies incorporate backup procedures for critical data, which can be restored quickly if a loss occurs. However, fewer companies are prepared for catastrophic system failures, in which they lose all data, the entire operating system, applications, settings, patches and more, reducing their system(s) to “bare metal.” After all, before data can be restored to a system, there must be a system to restore it to.

In this one hour webinar, learn how to enhance your existing backup strategies for better disaster recovery preparedness using Storix System Backup Administrator (SBAdmin), a highly flexible bare-metal recovery solution for UNIX and Linux systems.